Joseph Bottum

Occupying Anarchism

It's this assertion of reborn Anarchism that has received the most publishing attention in recent years. When I mentioned an interest in the subject, Books & Culture editor John Wilson emptied a shelf of his review-copy bookcase, sending me Paul and Karen Avrich's Sasha and Emma: The Anarchist Odyssey of Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman and Alex Butterworth's The World That Never Was: A True Story of Dreamers, Schemers, Anarchists, and Secret Agents, together with Marina A. Sitrin's Everyday Revolutions and the anthology Prison Blossoms.

He'd clearly been saving up on the topic for a while, since he even added a set of pre-Occupy volumes from the past few years: Peter Marshall's Demanding the Impossible, John Merriman's The Dynamite Club, and Tripp York's Living on Hope While Living in Babylon: The Christian Anarchists of the 20th Century. And that first mountain of books didn't include the three most widely reviewed new volumes on Anarchism in the wake of the Occupy movement, which had to arrive in a second bundle—David Graeber's The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement, James C. Scott's Two Cheers for Anarchism, and the multi-editor anthology We Are Many: Reflections on Movement Strategy from Occupation to Liberation.

I couldn't begin to read them all. I swore I wouldn't begin to read them all. But, then, I'm one of those people who lose time in grocery stores compulsively reading the text on cereal boxes, and I was incapable of not at least browsing my way through the forest of words. So let's do a little clearing away of the underbrush.

At a quick glance, Sasha and Emma seems solid professional historical work, with a narrative so painstakingly bloated that only specialists in the academic field will finish it. Butterworth's large-canvas The World That Never Was and Merriman's pointillist The Dynamite Club are both interesting popular history. Everyday Revolutions, Sitrin's account of Argentinian anarchism … I don't know what to say. The prose was so peculiar—alternating a thoughtless postmodernist pseudo-technical vocabulary with passages of equally thoughtless sentimentality—that it seems to have glued the pages together, making it impossible to wrench open the book past the second chapter.

The anthology Prison Blossoms, gathering old American texts, and We Are Many, collecting more recent reflections, both offer primary documentation. That doesn't make them readable, of course, but at least they have a reason to exist. Which Peter Marshall's Demanding the Impossible doesn't, as far as I can tell: error-ridden bloviation masquerading as an objective history of Anarchism is how it seemed before I gave up on its door-stopper 800 pages. Tripp York's small defense of Christian Anarchism, Living on Hope While Living in Babylon, however—now that was interesting. I recommend it to anyone generally interested in the topic, but written as it was before the clarifications that Occupy Wall Street brought, the book lacks analysis of the central fact to which any would-be Christian anarchist must face up: the deep anti-Christianity that pervades the movement.

I'm certain I haven't done these books justice. But what does seem apparent, even in an incomplete browsing of the topic, is that people in the Occupy movement are on a desperate hunt for an ideology. Or, at least (since many anarchists claim to reject the whole idea of ideologies), for some kind of satisfying philosophical account of themselves. And they have thus far produced only two significant texts: David Graeber's The Democracy Project and James C. Scott's Two Cheers for Anarchism.

Let's start with The Democracy Project. The ironies of attempting to be an anarchist in the political conditions of the early 21st century are not lost on Graeber. He tells, for instance, the story of participating in a London protest while thinking how odd it is to be among "a bunch of anarchists in masks outside Topshop, lobbing paint bombs over a line of riot cops, shouting, Pay your taxes!" But he believes, nonetheless, that a new theory began to emerge in the actual practice of Anarchism discovered by the Occupy movement. He played a role in the beginnings of that movement, and he spends most of The Democracy Project recounting its origins, explicating its history, and defending its reputation against its critics on the Left.

This is an interesting and well-written article, but I want to comment on this sentence:
"Every attempt at actual Anarchism has eventually become either a puppet of the communists, a leftist statism, or actual anarchy&mdash;which is to say a mob without staying power or resilience."
While I'm not sure what the author means by "actual Anarchism," the experience of the anarchists in Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War would seem to contradict his conclusion. More importantly, it is wrong to say that "actual anarchy" is a mob. Actual anarchy is an absence of coercion and an absence of artificial hierarchies.

Dirk Buchholz

September 08, 20134:51pm

Actually anarchism is not a failure or just well meaning theory One need only look to the Iroquois Confederacy to see the possibilities , in real and actual terms.

Avery

September 06, 201311:51pm

The media became quickly uninterested in how ignoble Occupy's political pursuit of spiritual freedom became. For example, this past May, Occupy Boston held a rally in support of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. This was posted to several Occupy mailing lists but I have not seen any media report on it. Perhaps, in the haste to manufacture narratives of hopeful protest or leftism, the real story, which is quite similar to this article, got lost.

Lewis Lorton

September 04, 20135:01pm

While I have no basis for any opinion on the relationships between Occupy and more formal political thought, several things were clear to me from the Occupy encampments I photographed and the people I talked to.
First, no matter how much this was denied, there were leaders who pushed the mass in a certain direction.
Second, most people had no clue about how to proceed towards the future they envisioned so foggily. There was this innocent belief that the inchoate 99% somehow had the knowledge embedded that would form this new society and, merely by stating their non-goals, it would somehow become so.
From the very first meeting I attended in October, 2011 in DC. it was clear that Occupy was a confused, embarrassingly self-righteous mess.

Free

September 01, 20134:17pm

It is fascinating to look at that mix of freedom and control that permeates all that is in people interactions that become governments or tribal relationships. for those on the left, the salient feature of any leftist philosophy is to reject any of the forms extent, including religion to clear the path for a new perfect, or at least better way forward.
The author notes that Marxisms as governments resulted in very strongly repressive systems. The withering that Marx foresaw in at least some of his writings has never been witnessed.
Do we not all want a system that is less intrusive and oppressive (very close correlatives)? The present movement throughout both parties' occupation of power is the growth of the state to intrude ever greater amounts in our lives.
The balance between anarchy where the bandit group seizes terror as tool of power and the state heavy with power and intrusiveness is difficult for man. It is not in man to direct his own steps....

fair

September 01, 20131:51pm

Ray,
I do not care if some people (he had over 50 million downloads) think Molyneux (or any of the authors in the article who I know nothing about) is a bloodsucking reptile, the reincarnation of Buddha nor how he published his books.
I particularly recommend his book "Practical Anarchy" to those who are curious to learn how a free society could work in practice. They are free, easy to read and logically consistent. They describe a fascinating model of a free (decentralized) society which has many values in common with most religions or atheists.
Alternatively his podcasts or youtube videos are super easy to understand/entertaining and the best introduction to Anarchism I have come across.
For those interested to checkout the other (left and not quite as free) side (anarcho syndicalism) google "participatory economics".
Both "left" and "right" are worth listening too as is the religious approach or that of the "Venus Project".

Ray

August 30, 20134:29pm

It would be generous to say that Mr. Molyneux is not a supporter of any church. That's because he's downright hostile to any theistic belief, especially Christianity. He is a cult leader, a failed academic who self-publishes (probably the only way he can get his work out in print), he encourages children to disown their families (a process known as "defoo-ing, or removing yourself from your "family of origin") and is a supporter of something known as "unschooling", where I guess kids do whatever they want. Christians should avoid this guy.

DrBrydon

August 30, 201310:41am

There are two choices: be self-governing or be governed. The Occupy movement refuses to believe that we are self-governing, because they can't accept that that the outcomes of politics are the ones most people want. Occupy believes that what they wanted is right, and everyone else is wrong (or has been systematically fooled). As Brecht observed about a similar group, they'd like to dissolve the people and elect a new one. Occupy failed first of all because its base premises are wrong. I say this as an unemployed member of the 99%. Because Occupy and Anarchism can't accept that we are self-governing, and they can't elaborate how they would practice self-government, the best they can hope for is failure, the worst fascism. Occupy is gone now because got the one thing it really needed: a nap.

interested in all alternatives

August 30, 20131:36am

Joseph,
You have touched on an important subject anarchism. However, I fear most readers will still have no idea what anarchism is about. In particular you have left out - perhaps the most popular branch: Anarcho-Capitalism.
I is based on two principles:
1. The non- aggression principle (nobody has the moral right to use force on anyone other than in self defense)
2. The right to own property including your own body (unlike in today's world where we are born as property of a state, needing a passport and permissions by our owner to move around etc..)
For a detailed description how roads, companies, a justice system, a defense system etc would work in a free society could work browse through some of Stefan Molyneux books (all free to download or even order): http://www.freedomainradio.com/FreeBooks.aspx#pa
Yes, the author is not a big supporter of any church but if you want to inform people about anarchism it does not make sense to skip the currently most popular "branch".